By Lava Possessed

By John Banville;

Published: August 9, 1992

AT a literary festival some years ago, the critic George Steiner expressed his impatience at the arrogance of poets and novelists, most of whom, it seemed to him, believe that theirs are the only areas of literature in which a writer can be truly creative. For his part, he declared, he would happily swap any number of second-rate sonnets for one page of Claude Levi-Strauss's "Tristes Tropiques," and whole shelves full of indifferent novels for a single chapter of Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams." His remarks aroused anger and vituperation, of course, yet many in the audience thought he had a point. That point, however, loses some of its acuity when one recalls that Mr. Steiner has committed fiction of his own -- three books of it, in fact. Would he exchange his first volume of tales, "Anno Domini," for a page of his "Language and Silence"? Perhaps he would; yet it seems that even the profoundest critics are not content merely to criticize fiction, but itch also to produce the stuff.

"The Volcano Lover" is a surprise. A historical novel by Susan Sontag? And a historical novel that declares itself (shamelessly, one almost wants to say) to be a romance, at that? Who would have thought it? Although she has written fiction in the past, Ms. Sontag is best known as a critic who for the last 30 years has been one of the leaders of the avant-garde in the United States, the American champion and interpreter of such quintessentially European figures as Roland Barthes and E. M. Cioran. Surely the author of that seminal essay "Against Interpretation" would look with nothing but scorn upon a modern-day attempt to produce something worthwhile in such a tired old genre as the historical novel? Well, not a bit of it. "The Volcano Lover," despite a few nods of acknowledgment toward post-modernist self-awareness, is a big, old-fashioned broth of a book. Sir Walter Scott would surely have approved of it; in fact, he would probably have enjoyed it immensely.

THE "volcano lover" of the title is Sir William Hamilton, the British diplomat and antiquary who is best remembered as the complaisant husband of Emma Hamilton, notorious mistress of Admiral Nelson. The book is set for the most part in Naples, where, from 1764 until his recall under a cloud in 1800, Sir William was the British envoy to the court of the egregious Bourbon monarch Ferdinand IV, later to become Ferdinand I, King of the Two Sicilies, and his formidable Austrian wife, Maria Carolina, sister of Marie Antoinette. The novel is a kind of triptych, divided among Hamilton, his wife and Lord Nelson. Ms. Sontag presents her characters in a way that is at once stylized and intimate; they might be figures from an old ballad, or even from the tarot pack. Thus Sir William is referred to throughout by his Italian sobriquet of "Cavaliere," Emma is "the Cavaliere's wife" and Nelson, of course, is "the hero." This is an effective means of escaping the difficulty all writers of historical novels face in presenting famous, often legendary, people from the past as plausible characters in a work of fiction. ("I say, Brahms, isn't that old Beethoven over there?")

The novel opens with a prologue that invites us to accompany the author on a visit to the flea market of history: "Why enter? What do you expect to see? I'm seeing. I'm checking on what's in the world. What's left." Some readers may quail at this self-conscious and rather ponderous opening; Ms. Sontag, however, has set her aim on a broad audience, and very rapidly -- indeed, at the turn of a page -- we find ourselves set down squarely in a solid and recognizable world: "It is the end of a picture auction. London, autumn of 1772." Here we meet the Cavaliere, and at once some of the main themes of the book are subtly sketched. He has tried and failed to sell a thing he loves dearly, a "Venus Disarming Cupid" by Correggio. "Having stopped loving it in order to sell it," he tells his nephew, "I can't enjoy it in the same way, but if I am unable to sell it I do want to love it again." Throughout her novel, the author will return repeatedly to the dichotomies of love and money, art and value, possession and renunciation.

The Cavaliere is a cold fish, but he has two grand passions. The first is his collection of art and artifacts, the second is volcanoes, and in particular Mount Vesuvius, which, thanks to his posting to Naples, he has ample opportunity to study. It is a measure of Ms. Sontag's skill and artistic tact that she does not labor the contrasts between the calmness and frailty of man-made treasures and the unpredictability and chaotic forcefulness of nature, while yet managing to keep this theme firmly in view throughout. In the love that erupts between Emma and Lord Nelson, the Cavaliere encounters another of those natural phenomena that he can only observe, never experience.

The first hundred pages or so constitute a portrait of the Cavaliere and his world, and although in her central character it might seem the author is working with poor material, this is, I think, the richest and most convincingly detailed section of the book. When Emma, and then Nelson, come on the scene, the perspective broadens, with a consequent loss of depth. Particularly good is the portrayal of the Cavaliere's first wife, Catherine, a Welsh heiress, refined, delicate, unhappy and hopelessly and unrequitedly in love with her husband. After Catherine, who has always been frail, dies from what the doctor diagnoses as "a paralysis," the Cavaliere's nephew, Charles Greville, sends his mistress to Naples. She presents herself as a widow, Mrs. Hart, but she is really the impossibly beautiful daughter of a village blacksmith "who had come to London at 14 as an underhousemaid, was seduced by the son of the house" and "soon found more dubious employment." Although Emma does not know it, the cynical Charles has "sold" her to his uncle in return for an indefinite loan to pay his debts. "So the old man collected the young woman," becoming "a kind of Pygmalion in reverse, turning his Fair One into a statue."